Lori Ewing
Premier League leaders Manchester City arrived at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium on Sunday to find the fallout from their financial rules verdict waiting at the gates.
It was their first game since being found guilty of 114 breaches of the league’s financial rules, and Liverpool supporters had prepared a blunt welcome.
Fans drowned out the announcement of City’s team with ear-splitting boos and chants of “Going down, going down!” in reference to a possible relegation sanction.
City silenced the hostile Anfield crowd with a 3-0 victory over a 10-man Liverpool, with second-half goals from Erling Haaland, Jeremy Doku and Rayan Cherki maintaining the Premier League leaders’ perfect start to the season.
An independent panel found City artificially inflated its revenue by more than $1 billion to help sign some of soccer’s biggest stars as it went on to dominate the Premier League.
City has appealed, but potential sanctions could include a massive fine, points deductions or even expulsion from England’s top flight.
Liverpool has twice missed out on the league title in recent years, losing by a single point to City.
In a raucous atmosphere among some 60,000 supporters at Anfield, one banner read: “A Generation Of Supporters Cheated” while some fans held three balloons making the number 114.
Another two banners referenced Oasis songs, since the band’s Liam and Noel Gallagher are devoted City fans.
“All of your stars are fading away,” read one, changing a line from the song “Stop Crying Your Heart Out,” while another said “& after all, you really robbed us all,” a parody of the song “Wonderwall.”
Liverpool fans are particularly angry as they were narrowly pipped to the Premier League title three times by Manchester City during the period in which they were deemed to have broken financial rules.
“If they only get, say, a demotion to the Championship, and they can come back in one season, that’s not enough. It should be more,” said lifelong Liverpool fan David Mathias.
“And as far as the titles they’ve won, I’d be quite happy to see them stripped of everything.”
Travelling City fans, meanwhile, held aloft inflatable bananas, a humorous tradition dating from their time out of the top flight in the 1980s.
Outside Liverpool’s ground, souvenir stalls did brisk business in flags and T-shirts bearing the word: “CHEATS.”
One flag depicted former City manager Pep Guardiola alongside players including Erling Haaland dressed in black-and-red prison stripes, with “CHEATS” splashed across their backs and prisoner number 114.
It was gallows humour with a football twist, and a sign that the repercussions of the ruling had quickly spilled from hearing rooms into the tribal theatre of the Premier League.
Merseyside police had been on high alert amid concerns City’s team bus could be targeted after a social media post promoted a “Bus greeting.”
But while Liverpool supporters lining Anfield Road held flares aloft and sang anti-City songs, the team took an alternate quieter route to the stadium.
In 2018, City’s team bus was struck by bottles, cans and flares before a Champions League match at Anfield and was damaged badly enough that a replacement was required for the journey back to Manchester.
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